Sports

After 89 regular season and playoff games, it comes down to this -- the Owen Sound Attack will play Mississauga's St. Michael's Majors on Sunday for the Ontario Hockey League championship.

"It's kind of interesting how things work out over the course of a season," Attack coach Mark Reeds said in a recent interview. "You go through the preparation starting June 4 at our barbecue, bringing players in, making trades, holding training camp, playing 68 games, playing the fourth series and then getting to the final possible game.

That's what you play the games for."

Game 7 of the best-of-seven OHL championship series is set for Sunday at 2 p.m. at Mississauga's Hershey Centre.

The Attack forced the game with a gritty 3-2 win at home on Thursday.

The Attack are now one win away from an OHL championship in a season in which many pundits had Owen Sound missing the playoffs altogether.

While that was used as bulletin board motivational material for the regular season, it won't be needed on Sunday.

"You can talk about whatever, doing it for the small towns, doing it for each other, for all those fans who couldn't be a player," said Reeds. "You have to find some internal motivation. We've been playing well for each other all year. We've had to dig down sometimes and look each other in the eye and see just how bad we want it. That's what it comes down to."

It may also come down to the Attack getting off to a better start as Owen Sound has given up the first goal in five of the six games in this series.

"We haven't had the best starts as of yet and it's something we definitely have to improve going forward to the Memorial Cup," said Owen Sound defenceman Jesse Blacker. "Being an underdog you've always got a fire and hopefully we can use that (Sunday)."

But Majors coach/general manager Dave Cameron doesn't think there's a favourite or an underdog in Game 7.

"My experience has taught me in hockey that when you get this far in the playoffs, there is no favourite," said Cameron. "A favorite is something driven by the media. It's two good teams that are on top of their games from top to bottom. We pre-pared before the series that it's going to go seven and seven will be overtime."

The silver lining for whoever loses Sunday's Game 7 is that both teams are going to the Memorial Cup, which opens on Friday in Mississauga.

The Majors are in as the host and the Attack will be the OHL's representative.